ACTIVIST TO LEAD NAACP

After years of quietly working as a community activist, Juvais Harrington has stepped into the spotlight as president of the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP.

On Monday, Harrington, who has been president since Jan. 1, took the ceremonial reins of the branch from former President Bradford Brown during the branch's monthly meeting.

Harrington, who traces his maternal roots back to Haiti, said he hopes to bridge the gap between black Americans and black immigrants while president.

"We're all from the diaspora," he said. "If we look at it in terms of slavery, we got off on different islands, but ... we're on the same boat."

Bridging the divide between communities will be a tall order considering the long-standing divisions between black Americans and black immigrants in South Florida. They have rarely come together with a common agenda.

Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, of which Harrington is a member, said that after long focusing on the civil rights struggle, the NAACP's challenge will now be to turn its attention to foreign policy and other issues that affect blacks from other countries.

"There is a new paradigm within the black community," Lafortune said.

Lafortune thinks that with Harrington at the helm, the local NAACP will be able to recruit better within immigrant communities.

"Juvais is a genuine advocate for the underdog, and our experience with him has been very, very positive," Lafortune said.

A graduate of Florida A&M; University, Florida's pre-eminent historically black university, Harrington also hopes to mine connections with FAMU alumni in his new position.

"FAMU carries a lot of weight, and it carries as much weight, and unfortunately maybe more, than the NAACP, but it's also a way to bridge those gaps and bring people in," he said.

Harrington, 42, grew up in Chicago at a time when the civil rights, black nationalist and black power movements were converging on his hometown in the 1960s and 1970s. He reconnected with his Haitian roots as a college student in the 1980s.

"The whole concept was we don't take anything off of anybody. We know who we are," Harrington said of his childhood.

Harrington is certainly a more traditional choice for president than his predecessor, Brown, who is white. Although Brown has spent more than 40 years with the NAACP, his race did not sit well with some people in South Florida's black community.

Harrington said Brown's legacy is one of bringing people together and of being accessible. As for his own presidency, Harrington, whose "eclectic" experience includes working for government entities and nonprofit organizations, said he will focus on education and immigration.

In South Florida, those issues are entwined, he said, especially when Haitian-American parents do not understand the educational system and their children struggle with standardized tests such as the FCAT.